A grave in Gaza

Chapter 8

Revolutionary Council delegates were crowding the front desk of the Sands Hotel when Omar Yussef returned from lunch at the Masharawi house. His two visits to Colonel al-Fara’s headquarters that morning had drained him. His shirt was damp and his sweaty hair straggled down his neck to his collar. His eyes stung from the dust storm. He wanted a coffee, but the breakfast room was full of politicians and their aides, chatting noisily.

Khamis Zeydan was at a table near the door. Six other men in suits sat around the table, as did Sami Jaffari, wearing the black T-shirt that accentuated the lithe muscularity of his shoulders and chest. Everyone smoked cigarettes or pulled on the pipe of a nargileh. The suits were rapt by the story Khamis Zeydan told. Omar Yussef couldn’t hear what his friend said, but he could tell the punchline was coming by the way Khamis Zeydan leaned back in his chair and lifted his arms wider and higher with each phrase. When the arms were above his head, the table exploded with laughter.

Sami noticed Omar Yussef through the doorway. He winked and raised his eyes, as though he were suffering patiently.

Omar Yussef went up to his room. He sat quietly on his bed. Someone locked a door nearby and walked down the corridor, arguing into his cellular phone. Then it was silent. Omar Yussef listened to his breath. He thought of Eyad Masharawi, beaten and tormented, and of the children who missed him at home. Masharawi’s chances of escaping further torture might depend on how Omar Yussef handled Professor Maki at dinner that evening. He felt such sudden, desperate loneliness that his jaw dropped and the skin of his cheeks felt heavy. He picked up the phone and struggled to remember how to get an outside line. Then he dialed his home.

Nadia answered.

“Greetings, my darling,” Omar Yussef said. “How are you?”

“May Allah be thanked, Grandpa. What’s happening in Gaza?”

“There’s a dust storm here,” he said. “How’s the weather in Bethlehem?”

“Very hot. No dust storm.”

“You’re lucky. What have you been doing?”

“I was reading one of your books this afternoon, Grandpa. The big one about ancient Egypt, with the pictures of the pyramids and the Egyptian gods.”

“I’m quite sure I wouldn’t be allowed to bring such a book to Gaza. Hamas would object to its paganism.”

“Exactly. Shame on you, Grandpa.”

Omar Yussef tried to remember how old his sons had been when they developed a sense of sarcasm. He couldn’t help feeling that Nadia, at age twelve, was advanced even in this.

“So I read in the book that Seth, who had the head of a jackal, was the god of the desert and that he made the dust storms,” Nadia said.

“Then the jackal-headed god is hard at work in Gaza. Unlucky for the men of Gaza.”

“I also read about men. About where men came from, according to the Egyptians.”

“Where did they come from?”

“The god of creation was called Atum. He made everything. First, he snorted the god of air out of his nose. Then he spat the goddess of water out of his mouth. And then some others that I can’t remember, but they all came out of his body. When he looked at the result of all his work, Atum cried and each of his tears became a man to populate the world. So, you see, we all began with a god crying.”

Omar Yussef remembered the myth. He also recalled that it started with Atum arousing himself and engendering other gods with his orgasm. He hoped that hadn’t been in the book Nadia had read.

“What do you think of the myth?” he asked.

“I think it makes sense. It explains why so much of life is sad and why we face so much wickedness, no matter how good we are.”

“Perhaps Atum was crying tears of joy.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, Grandpa. But I don’t think he was, anyway.”

“I’m glad that you’re reading about history and how ancient people understood the world. There’s much more to life than the views expressed by people in our own town and in our own time. I have other books like that one. I’ll show them to you when I get home.”

“Grandpa, I made you a homepage.” Nadia was suddenly excited.

“You drew something for me?”

“What? No. For your website. I started it yesterday, after we spoke. I registered your domain name, and I wrote the text for the homepage and I posted a photo of you and I did some graphics, too.”

“What’s a homepage?”

“When people type in the address of your website, the homepage is the first one that will come up. Of course, I have to make other pages, so they can navigate through the site.”

She has grown up more than I realized, Omar Yussef thought. She understands the sadness at the core of the world in the story of the Egyptian god’s tears. But she also has this technological excitement, which suggests she believes in the future. He wondered how this change in his favorite grandchild had crept up on him. Perhaps he missed other changes in the world around him, too, simply because they didn’t directly affect him. He remembered that he had been surprised when Salwa Masharawi told him her husband had been tortured. Now his surprise seemed alien to him, as though he would take it for granted that any man arrested for criticizing the government would have the soles of his feet beaten. Since that time in jail so long ago, he had spent decades building a wall of innocence around himself, but he had lost some portion of it in Gaza. Perhaps it hadn’t been innocence, after all, but blindness. He understood why the god Atum had cried when he looked on the world he had made.

“Grandpa, is there a computer in your hotel?”

“Yes, there’s a computer at the reception desk.”

“Do they have internet access?”

“I can ask them. There’s a very nice lady at reception.”

“Write down your homepage address. It’s www.pa4d.ps. ”

Omar Yussef wrote the web address on a piece of hotel notepaper. “What does that mean?”

Nadia laughed. “You’ll see. You have to go and call it up on the web. Do you want to talk to Grandma?”

“Yes, please, my darling.” Omar Yussef folded the slip of paper with the web address on it and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

He pulled back the drapes on his window. The hotel drive rose twenty yards from the lobby doors to the main beach road. The haziness of the dirt-filled air was thickening into twilight. A donkey trotted along the road, pulling a cart piled with boxes of tomatoes. A string of yellow taxis followed, sounding their horns and jockeying to be the first to overtake. A detail of red-bereted soldiers leaned against the guardpost outside the chief of Military Intelligence’s home across the road. The building was a plain apartment block six stories high. Only one floor was illuminated, a sickly fluorescence glowing through the dust.

Maryam came on the line. “Omar, dear, what did you have for lunch?”

He felt the loneliness again, sharply. “Maryam, my life, I love you.”

“Omar?”

“I’ll come home soon, I promise.”

“Omar, is something wrong?”

Omar Yussef’s eyes stung. He thought it might be a good idea to cry out all the dust from the storm. He felt ready for it. His room was cold and he imagined himself imprisoned in it, far from home. You know what it’s like to be shut away, terrified and alone, he thought. He was nauseous and he feared ruining everything that night by nervously throwing up his meal at Professor Maki’s dining table. He breathed deeply and fought to visualize his wife’s face. “I had a good lunch at the home of a friend.”

“Good. Don’t let Magnus take you to a restaurant. They cut corners with their recipes.”

“I’m eating at the home of a-a friend tonight, too.”

“Did Nadia tell you about your homepage?”

“Yes, did you see it?”

“No, she won’t show it to anyone until you’ve approved it.”

“She’s very clever.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No, I’m proud. I should get ready for dinner now, Maryam.”

“Go ahead. Everyone is fine here, may Allah be thanked.”

He hesitated. “You’re my whole life.”

Maryam laughed. “Omar, are you going to start singing me old songs? Allah bless you, darling.”

Omar Yussef hung up. Three jeeps halted at the home of General Moussa Husseini across the street. He assumed they were changing the guard shift, but the men at the gate remained at their posts and the jeeps didn’t leave. Instead, they formed a cordon around the entrance. The soldiers in the jeeps jumped from the rear of their vehicles and jogged through the door of the apartment building. On every floor, the lights came on. Then they all went out at once.

Omar Yussef turned off his lamp and watched Husseini’s house. Nothing happened. He waited. Perhaps it had been only a routine bolstering of the guard. This might have been how they always prepared for the onset of night. Except that tonight there’s a dust storm, he thought. The darkness will be doubled.